'This Time Around: Reinventing Community' to premiere on the WOUB-FM Radio Network

ATHENS, Ohio (Sept. 4, 2003) -- “This Time Around: Reinventing Community” will premiere Tuesday, Sept. 9, at 8:30 a.m. on the WOUB-FM Radio Network. The first program features interviews with Joy Padgett, director of the Governor's Office of Appalachia, and Joy Huntley, Ohio University professor of Politics of Appalachia. The series premier provides background information about how our communities in Ohio were established.

The new series highlights community development issues and is produced by radio producer Sandra Sleight-Brennan. "This Time Around" will air every Tuesday morning and will feature a wide array of community related topics such as infrastructure problems, expectations of political leaders, and unemployment issues, just to name a few. Features will focus on communities within the 37-county coverage area of the WOUB Radio Network and will include four quarterly call-in forum programs in the coming year. A companion website is being created that will allow community members to interact online.

The yearlong series is made possible by an $88,000 grant from the AppalachianRegional Commission (ARC) to produce a series of radio programs on community development. The project will start an Appalachian Ohio discussion about what residents want this region to be and how citizens can help forge that direction themselves.

Tim Myers, WOUB director of Radio and Interactive Services, is the project director. Myers says planning of this project has been underway for several months. "We worked on this for a year-and-a-half before the grant was announced," Myers adds. "This project matches the goal of the Telecommunications Center to air programming that reflects and serves the public of southeast Ohio. This is the first time that the ARC has funded a project that will allow us to reach all of our listeners in southeast Ohio. We are very grateful for their support."

A number of community groups will be working with the WOUB Radio Network on this project, including Hocking College, the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet), Rural Action, Little Cities of Black Diamonds, Buckeye Hills-Hocking Valley Regional Development District, and the Governor's Office of Appalachia.

The Ohio University Telecommunications Center, a unit of the College ofCommunication, operates two television stations -- WOUB-TV/Channel 20 in Athens and WOUC-TV/Channel 44 in Cambridge -- one cable channel -- WOUB II -- and six radio stations -- WOUB-1340 AM, WOUB-91.3 FM, WOUC-89.1 FM, WOUH-91.9 FM, WOUL-89.1 FM and WOUZ-90.1 FM.